I frown and look toward our miserable light source — the bas-relief wall — but I see nothing that would change his shadow. Just his, no one else’s. Perhaps a bird flew past the carved-out holes. I don’t believe it, but I have no other way to explain what I just saw.
“Should we turn it?” the Vagabond asks quietly.
“Of course we should!” Sir Sorken rumbles. “The only way out is forward, my lass.”
He is leaning back against the stairs, seemingly at ease as he sips his tea, face freshly shaven, hair brushed back neatly. Both Engineers are brilliant men, but I’ve known enough brilliant men to know that sometimes practicality escapes them. If your head is too high in the clouds, sometimes you can’t see the dirt.
“This place is not making us Saints,” she says quietly, and she’s not looking at them. She’s looking upward, where those hideous statues of us stand.
“We look like Saints in these statues,” Sir Owalan argues.
“Do we?” she asks. “Do those even look like us? Or is it just another twist of the mind? Like the door twisted our sin so that the doubt I confessed twisted into terror? Now we’ve all confessed to murder. What is it twisting us into with that?”
“Metaphysical arguments and the great philosophies are a wonderful pastime,” Sir Sorken announces like he’s the first to ever have noticed this. “But they are hardly of value to us now. We are trapped in the earth with few supplies. A clock is ticking. We do not know what happens when it runs out, but we do know that the last time we opened a door, this room spun. If we open another door, another wall will twist over this great open space that faces the sea. It has but a series of narrow stained glass windows and we will not be able to escape through them, but if we twist it a third time, then the open door will face the sea, and if nothing else occurs to us by then, we might fling ourselves into it and escape that way, or twist the room a final time and return to how it was set up before, and then stride grandly up the stairs and back into the world. Or, we can sit here and argue until we are nothing but bones and no one but Cleft and Suture will ever know our fates.”
I glance again at the golems. What would happen to them if we all died? Would they tunnel through the rock and go their own way? Or would they sit down here and wait for the next party of fools to open the door and slip down below? Could anyone open it from above when it was twisted as it was right now?
“Perhaps we could scale the wall and find the open door, even if the stairs don’t lead to it anymore,” the High Saint says quietly, but he doesn’t look like he likes that idea.
Beside me, Hefertus wakes, sits, and stretches like a big cat. He is entirely at his ease.
“We have no climbing gear. We have no other option but to go on,” Sir Sorken says gently but firmly. “You all know this. Dithering about it is merely wasting time.”
“Besides,” Sir Coriand agrees, “Don’t you want what we came here for? The Cup of Tears? Sainthood?”
“I do.” The High Saint’s words sound like a vow. His eyes are too bright. I don’t trust eyes that bright unless they’re in love. Even then. “I want it with all my heart.”
“Well, there you have it then,” Sir Coriand says as if he is offering us all a good gift. He’s not. “This is a puzzle box. A very large, very clever one, but a puzzle box all the same. And puzzle boxes guard important treasures. What, I ask you, is more important than a relic of the God and possible Sainthood?”
“Nothing,” the High Saint agrees. He’s staring off into the distance at some glory the rest of us do not see, his knuckles white around the bowl in his hands. I do not like how his shadow flickers with every breath he takes.
“We still haven’t solved the problem of who is killing people,” Victoriana says calmly.
I feel a little thrill at her relentless bravery. It is so like her to state this in the open, as if a murderer — if there is one — isn’t worth worrying about offending. I remember how her breath hitched when I healed her. How that tidy hair had spilled everywhere. I must look away for a moment before I can look back.
When all eyes turn to Victoriana, she lifts an eyebrow. “The Seer did not kill herself.”
“Perhaps the power of the God turned on her as it turned on Sir Kodelai when he abused it,” Sir Owalan says, unconcerned.
He slips the sleeve of his robe down where a knife is still sticking luridly through his flesh. He should tend to that before it becomes infected and does irreparable damage. If he thinks that I will heal it…
I pause, guilt washing over me. It is not for me to say who received the God’s healing. If he asks, I will not deny him, self-inflicted though the wound may be.
“Some people are not as dedicated to the God as they ought to be,” Sir Owalan says gravely.
I snort at that.
“And does that usually result in decapitation?” the Vagabond asks, her eyes wide with feigned innocence.
Sir Sorken laughs, and down here in the bowels of this place, it does not sound like a nice laugh.
“There are no murders happening here,” he says as if he is a judge rendering a verdict. “And now, children, we have a puzzle to solve before time runs out.”
“What happens when the time runs out?” the Majester asks uncomfortably. I do not think he meant to be a murderer. I think he thought he was a mercy-killer. Or perhaps this place has driven him mad. His hands still tremble and there are green shadows around his mouth and under his eyes.
Even so, I feel my skin creep when I look at him.
“What puzzle?” Hefertus asks, stretching again before standing and working the strap on his sword belt.
